By Eric Boye At Sparks Grove, our Futures practice approaches business challenges with a wide lens, helping clients explore possibilities in a way which aims to push beyond baseline assumptions and industry norms to give clients an entirely new vantage point. Futures research is not an exercise in prediction; it’s based on exploration, signals, and context. We investigate the boundaries of what may be possible through scenarios of the years to come by examining emerging discontinuities, uncovering weak signals, and…

By Leigh Cook and Carol Massa As Sparks Grove continues our journey as catalysts for change in our industry and with our clients, our everyday work is constantly evolving. Experimentation is key in our business and culture, because it’s how we explore and iterate new ways of thinking and challenge ourselves to continually improve. In our previous blog post about Human Experience (HX) we elaborated on our core HX design principles and how we create more human experiences: These principles…

In our Human to Human blog series, we dive into the human side of Sparks Grove to learn more about our people behind the business. In part five of our series, we are speaking with Tara Bates, head of the Integrated Production practice at Sparks Grove. Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges relative to experience design in today’s world? We work on complex projects with integrated teams of deep subject matter experts in insights, strategy, design and…

By Sandjar Kozubaev Over the last few years, the practices of strategic foresight (i.e. thinking about the future) and design (e.g., imagining and creating new products, services and experiences) have been intersecting in new and interesting ways. While decades ago Nobel laureate and multidisciplinary scholar Herbert Simon defined design as being about transforming the current situation into some preferred future, today there is a more concerted effort on the part of many designers and researchers to think critically and creatively…

In our Human to Human blog series, we dive into the human side of Sparks Grove to learn more about our people behind the business. In part four of our series, we are speaking with Tricia Gillentine, Senior Manager on the Experience Design team. Tricia’s superpower is making the world better (and more meaningful) through design, one pixel at a time! Q: What are the biggest challenge(s) of design in today’s world (internally or externally)? The biggest challenge of design…

In our Human to Human blog series, we dive into the human side of Sparks Grove to learn more about our people behind the business. In part three of our series, we are speaking with Mariella Volio, a member of the Experience Design Strategy team. Mariella describes her job as play time, where she can use the excuse of being on the creative side to invite people to come play in the sandbox. Q: What are the biggest challenge(s) of…